Whereas what I actually wanted to do all weekend was to lie on the library bed and read my new Bernice Summerfield: The Inside Story book constantly. And/or listen to the novelisation of the Dalek Masterplan which I got out from the library in a flurry of Jean Marsh & Peter Purves adoration (their recent audio play The Anachronauts totally did for me, and Jean Marsh’s brilliant audio rendition of the original Upstairs Downstairs novel complete with grumpy Scottish butler impersonation DID NOT HELP).

May is disappearing at a frantic rate. People keep asking what I want for my birthday. More time please, instead of it ribboning out of my fingers and disappearing into the sunset.

June is upon us, and with it comes not only the school holidays (which I rather look forward to these days – my elder daughter is old enough that having her home is marginally more compatible with me getting some writing done than is having to juggle her school & activity routine) but also Continuum travel, and one of my twice-yearly bouts of actual outside-the-house work.

So… the novel writing is likely to slow in the first half of June, which is frustrating as I’m currently on something of a roll. Luckily I have signed up for the Clarion Write-a-thon (proper link to my page here – I think it wasn’t set up yet last time I linked) to get me back on track.

This year’s goal is simply to produce more stuff. Stories, books whatever. Words, Tansy, words!

We’re joined today by guest viewer Joanne Anderton, who is discovering New Who for the first time!

“Blink”

Season three, episode ten

Sally Sparrow – Carey Mulligan

The Doctor – David Tennant

Martha Jones – Freema Agyeman

TEHANI:
We move straight from the excellence that is “Human Nature / The Family of Blood” into the completely different, but equally amazing, “Blink”. And I want to say it straight up – Sally Sparrow ROCKS. Carey Mulligan, who plays Sparrow, absolutely owns this episode – it’s pretty amazing, for a one off appearance.

She shares very little screen time with the Doctor, as this is a “Doctor-lite” episode, and I wonder if this lets us really embrace her – she IS the focus of the episode. While the Doctor is there, making things happen, he’s not THERE, onscreen, with his dazzling charisma – it’s all about Sally – ordinary Sally thrown into the strangest of events – who really gets the job done. I LOVE her!

Favourite line: “I’m clever, and I’m listening. And don’t patronise me, because people have died and I’m not happy.” Go Sally – Doctor smackdown!

And two episodes in a row we have a gorgeous, strong woman finding the Doctor, and passing him up. Poor Matron Redfern in the preceding episodes really had a hard job of it, but Sally did it splendidly – she recognised the Doctor for who and what he is, and it made her choice easy.

TANSY:
I think Sally Sparrow is the character most requested to return as a companion – and as Carey Mulligan’s star rises in Hollywood it becomes less and less likely. She is playing Daisy in the new Great Gatsby movie opposite Leo DiCaprio!!

TEHANI:
Even more than Sophia Myles?? Wow, impressive!

DAVID:
Yes, Sally really is the star of this episode. She has some wonderful lines, and we see the whole range of human emotion in yet another stellar guest appearance. How moving was the scene in the hospital, or how cutting was the “We just run a shop together”? I love the line you mentioned, Tehani, but my personal favourite – “Sad is happy for deep people.” Carey Mulligan has a great screen presence, and I can see why people wanted Sally Sparrow to return. But, as I will no doubt talk about further, I think Sally makes the right decision in the end.

TANSY:
I do love Mulligan in this; her performance is fantastic and it’s one of my favourite Moffat scripts, not for the scary parts so much as the excellent banter, and the economy of words. Nearly every line is packed cleverly with so much character as well as driving the plot forward.

Sally is a wonderful example of someone who can be heroic without necessarily being violent or special. Though she is of course, clever!

I wondered watching this whether they could actually do a whole season (or mini-season) of Doctor Who stories that do exactly this, that show a one off character and their experience with the Doctor from their own point of view rather than that of the Doctor or an Official Companion. Would it work if this was the formula rather than an occasional experience?

TEHANI:
Do we love the Doctor too much to appreciate Doctor-lite episodes for a full season?

TANSY:
They wouldn’t have to be Doctor-lite! Just putting the point of view in the hands of new characters instead of a continuing companion. It could be argued of course that they did this in 2009, but I don’t want to spoil David so I’ll shut up now…

JO:
Don’t spoil for me either, thank you very much!

DAVID:
Although they are very different in other ways this reminded me of another “Doctor-lite” episode, “Love and Monsters”. While the Doctor doesn’t have much screen time in either, his presence hovers over everything that happens, casting a shadow over the entire story. While it may be that the rarity of these episodes, I would love to see more of them because they bring into focus the way the Doctor changes the lives of everyone he touches, even when it is only a brief encounter, and sometimes he really does seem a bit cavalier about it.

TEHANI:
That’s a good point – to me, the Doctor is (almost always) like a puppet master. There’s a sense that he (almost) always has control of the situation, even when he doesn’t appear to. But in the Doctor-lite episodes, you can SEE this. It’s a tangible thing, because otherwise the episode wouldn’t work!

JO:
I love the Doctor as an easter egg in this episode, the way he “Shows up where he’s not supposed to be.” I think it’s a great way to sum him up!

TANSY:
I agree – and it’s a sign of how iconic David Tennant as the Doctor has become that those few glimpses of him are so surreal and exciting.

JO:
Even for me, who has never watched any Dr Who until now (yeah yeah, don’t all fall out of your chairs at once) and was very taken with Christopher Eccleston. So much so that I was even a bit skeptical of David Tennant at first. At first…

TEHANI:
I was determined NOT to like Tennant, Jo, but ended up loving him just like everyone else Although having said that, second time around it is interesting to watch for the arrogance he plays in the Doctor, which makes him somewhat less likeable!

DAVID:
As an episode this is another triumph for Moffat, it’s wonderfully tight and self contained and like “The Girl in the Fireplace”, you could imaginative showing it to someone with no idea of what Doctor Who is all about. I still think “Human Nature/The Family of Blood” deserved the Hugo more, but I am considerably less outraged! Not only is it a bit of mystery story where we slowly unravel what is happening with clue after clue coming together, but it is also a mighty fine example of the sort of horror I hate (and when I say hate I mean I enjoy but get the creeped the Hell out by). There is no blood or gore, just a deeply creepy atmosphere and that sense if you close your eyes something terrible might happen. Oh and the shock of something all of a sudden being that close to you! *shudders*

TEHANI:
I have to say that the Weeping Angels are probably the creepiest of the New Who monsters for me. I find them genuinely scary, even though really, what they do is not as horrible as some – just relocate you to another time. No pain, no carnage, just the opportunity to live out your life somewhen else. Sure, you have to leave all your friends and family behind, but still… And yet they are sincerely terrifying!

JO:
This episode is such a horror movie. The Angels are seriously creepy (there’s a cemetery on my drive to work and thanks to Blink I cannot help but glance at the angel on my way past…). The old house has a haunted quality to it — statues that move, noises from upstairs, shadowy basement and unexplained writing on the wall. The musical score and direction only emphasise it.

I only really noticed how tight the writing and the imagery were on my second viewing. The first time round I was just creeped out and seriously wondering what was going to happen next. Second time around the prevalence of watching / viewing imagery really struck me. From movies going on in the background, the importance of the DVDs, to Sally repeating “Don’t look at me!” to Billy Shipton when she embarrasses herself in front of him. That scene seriously sent a tingle up my spine, because I knew what was about to happen next…

TANSY:
Billy is an amazing character – and he comes across in just three scenes. Sally’s friend Kathy is much the same – there’s a whole world in each of their performances, and we only get fragments of greater lives that are hinted at. The idea of a monster that kills you using your natural lifespan against you is brilliant and awful.

TEHANI:
I agree about Billy – another great actor for the episode. They were all pretty good weren’t they! But the scene with Billy and Sally flirting was just delightful. Then so sad

DAVID:
Both stories of displacement were wonderfully told, I thought. Whether it was the letter from Kathy, or Billy’s death bed scene, there was a real emotional resonance. And the interesting thing is that both of them still managed to find a great deal of happiness in their altered lives, so on first examination you might almost think that what the Angels did to them wasn’t actually that bad. But, the terrible thing is that the Angels didn’t give them any choice in the matter, they simply took their future away without care for the consequences. Their victims’ lives could have just as easily ended in desperate loneliness as happiness, and whatever good came from it is due to the character of Kathy and Billy, not anything the Angels did.

JO:
Oh I like that, hadn’t thought of it that way before. In a way it makes their fates even more tragic. Both Billy and Kathy were strong enough to adapt, and find happiness. Makes them less like victims, somehow, and altogether just … sad. But sad is happy for deep people, right? :p

TANSY:
The key thing of course is that the Weeping Angels are no real threat to the Doctor – he could just hang around and wait. But that isn’t how he works and more importantly, having Martha with him ups the stakes because if she loses 40 years of her life, that’s a big deal.

Poor old Billy, though.

DAVID:
I thought the only real weak spot in this episode was the ending. It could have quite easily finished with them walking back into the shop, with Sally finally able to let go and move on with her life (something people who encounter the Doctor can’t always do!), the statue montage seemed a bit gimmicky and cheap compared to the rest of the episode. It’s a small quibble though, I can see why this episode inspired t-shirts (hmmm, there’s an idea…), it is exceptional. I’m willing to put up with the occasional Slitheen if it’s the price we pay for the other end of the scale.

TEHANI:
I don’t know, I kind of liked it – a nice creepy touch to finish it off!

TANSY:
I always forget that part, and laughed when I saw it – it is a touch that probably wasn’t necessary, over egging the pudding somewhat, but they weren’t to know how successful the episode would be in freaking people the hell out about statues out of the corner of their eyes…

JO:
I could have done without the statue montage. Sally doing what humans do, and getting on with her life would have been a stronger place to end it.

DAVID:
There were echoes of the Seventh Doctor in Ten here, as well, and I am thinking especially of Curse of Fenric and the idea of the Doctor as a bit of a manipulator of people and events. He really does set up the Angels as if it were a game of chess, moving all his pieces into position perfectly. Of course, the pieces are people. It also helps having Sally’s package of info, nothing like being a few moves ahead the whole time!

JO:
It’s cool that ultimately, Sally saves the day! The doctor relied on her and her package of info to know how to move all his pieces. I shall take this opportunity to add to the chorus of Sally-love!

TANSY:
Really the Doctor isn’t actually manipulating anything – it looks like he is throughout, and it plays on our acceptance that he does that sort of thing, but really it’s Sally that instigates the matter and he is just doing what he’s told. Which is quite a clever twist.

I think the history of the Doctor as the great manipulator helps with the fake out, though!

TEHANI:
I thought the device of the DVD easter egg was really cool! And cleverly done too – I mean, we know the Doctor can jump about and find out what went on as he pleases, but to have it be Sally who provides him with the information – nice touch!

What about the best friend? Narrative device or essential part of the story, do you think?

TANSY: Essential! Kathy is the reason that Sally is so determined to get to the heart of the matter – otherwise she’s just a bored girl playing at being a sleuth. Also that moment where the letter arrives and Kathy hasn’t actually LEFT YET – chilling!

JO: Oh absolutely — so chilling. And sad. This initial friendship between Sally and Kathy is vital to the episode. As mentioned, it gives Sally a reason to keep searching for the truth, and really hits home for the viewer just how disturbing the Angels are. Sally has to go on without her. And she can’t even say goodbye.

DAVID:
Essential, definitely. Her fate gives us an idea of the stakes, it gives Sally a real reason to pursue her investigation no matter what obstacles get in her way, and it sets up one of my favourite scenes of the episode with the delivery of the letter. And, the moment Kathy realises where – and when – she has ended up is is wonderfully written. If it had been a stranger, or peripheral character, it wouldn’t have packed such an emotional punch.

JO:
I would like to say a quick thank you to you guys for including me in this, and for giving me such an awesome episode to work with! I’ve been really enjoying my Dr Who education so far, this is like an added bonus … or … an easter egg…

TEHANI:
Thanks for joining us, it’s been fun!

=======

Watching New Who – in conversation with David McDonald, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Tehani Wessely

David is coming to New Who for the first time, having loved Classic Who as a kid. Tehani is a recent convert, and ploughed through Seasons 1 to 6 (so far) in just a few weeks after becoming addicted thanks to Matt Smith – she’s rewatching to keep up with David! Tansy is the expert in the team, with a history in Doctor Who fandom that goes WAY back, and a passion for Doctor Who that inspires us all (plus a seven-year-old daughter who is finding her own Doctors for the first time). We’re going to work our way through New Who, using season openers and closers, and Hugo shortlisted episodes, as our blogging points. Just for fun! We have already talked about:

“Rose”, S01E01
“Dalek”, S01E06
“Father’s Day, S01E08
“The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”, S01E09/10
“Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, S01E12/13
Season One Report Card – David, Tansy, Tehani

“The Christmas Invasion,” 2005 Christmas special
“New Earth”, S02E01
“School Reunion,” S02E03
“The Girl in the Fireplace”, S02E04
“Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel”, S02E05/06
Army of Ghosts/Doomsday, S02E12/13

Season Two Report Cards: David, Tehani, Tansy
“The Runaway Bride”, 2006 Christmas Special
“Smith and Jones”, S03E01
The Shakespeare Code & Gridlock, S0302-03
Human Nature/The Family of Blood S0308-09

Voyager also put up a Flappers With Swords post of mine: Food For Thought in Fantasy Fiction.

The Mary Sue interviews Rachel Weil, the creator of Femicom, a web museum of “girly games” which seeks to archive and provoke discussion about those most-derided computer games: the ones with all the pink. It’s a great, crunchy discussion about how products “aimed at women” can simultaneously alienate male and female gamers, but also how the gaming community is so quick to disassociate itself with games thought of as feminine.

Mamaguilt, which I think is my new favourite blog title, has started a ‘Sheroes’ page to inspire us with amazing female heroes whenever the internet gets us down. Wonderful stuff, and I love some of her choices. Mary Beard for the win!

Karen Healey talks about Why I Write Diversity, and it’s an important post which I will probably need to link people back to many times in my future life. *bookmarks*

Peter M Ball talks about social media, and asks how important it is to harness the ‘niche’. No, I didn’t just link to him cos he said my blog was “a thing of fannish beauty…”

Malinda Lo talks about the invisibility of queer women in recent discussions about the importance of gay (male) characters on TV.

Abigail Nussbaum looks at the ethics of making television shows about horses which might endanger the animals, and transitions from this into considering the ethics of what very young actresses are asked to do in HBO’s Game of Thrones. Thought provoking stuff.

Some Avengers commentary: Indiewire looks at the awesomeness of Black Widow (or more to the point, the unusually good representation of a female action hero in a movie like this), and the way that her characters has been dismissed and ignored in a great deal of the mainstream film coverage.

Elsewhere, a group interview with the Avengers cast takes on the necessity to include more women in future Avengers movies (yes please) and the portrayal of women in action movies generally. The comments by Johanssen, Jackson & Whedon are particularly interesting – I love that Johanssen is so outspoken about the kinds of issues actresses usually face in stories based on comic books, and also that Samuel L Jackson starts out mocking the whole women/superheroes issue but once he realises he is coming across as an ass, redeems himself thoroughly with a declaration about Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight…

Sean the Blogonaut talks about being an isolated fan, and how changing technology has had such a positive effect on his own fannish activities, over at David McDonald’s blog.

A really nice piece by Marie Brennan about Katniss as an epic character.

“If a story starts with a maiden, let’s not assume that she has to get locked in a tower.”

I haven’t been blogging about writing much lately, meanwhile. I am writing a lot. I’ve started something new while I wait to hear about a whole bunch of irons which may or may not be in the fire. It’s exciting me a lot. I’m also writing a bunch of short fic and trying to get myself Out There. The tiny time windows I have to write in are starting to squeeze tighter and tighter, but there’s nothing I can do about that except breathe deep and carry on. I’m nearly at 50K total fiction words for the year, which would be more exciting if the year wasn’t nearly half over.

The Clarion Write-a-thon just swung past my radar again. I had completely forgotten about it and yet, checking back over my blog, it’s the thing that made the difference in building writing momentum for me last year, and helped me get to the halfway point of my Nancy Napoleon novel. 37,000 words in six weeks, not shabby at all.

So I’m signing up again. I might try to be a bit more pro-active about fundraising rather than just piggybacking on the Write-a-thon for my own ends like I did last year – I was a bit embarrassed to spruik for sponsorship, but hey, it’s a good cause! I thoroughly recommend people joining in if they want to give their writing a kick in the pants – the nice thing about it is you can set whatever goals you like, which makes it a bit more convivial and inclusive than the Nano tradition. (not that I’m knocking Nano, if it works, it works!)

If you want to encourage me, or any of the other Write-a-thon participants (already some quite famous names signed up, though of course those of less famous names may need the encouragement even more) then do please donate to the fundraiser – Clarion is one of those marvellous institutions that genuinely enriches the SF community.

Stephanie Smith, Kim Westwood & TansyRR

Instead, we mostly took part in that classic social medium of talking each other’s ears off before, during and after the awards ceremony, and then again over the longest breakfast in the world with many friends and colleagues the next morning. Bliss!

Some good updates I have seen are from Zena (who I met while lurking outside the theatre waiting to be let in!) and from Sean the Blogonaut, who proved that the best event reporting can come from someone who wasn’t even there.

Apologies for lack of tweetage and podcasting! It’s not that I forgot you all, I was just giddy with child-freedom and the lack of oxygen to my feet after walking in my heels to the theatre…

While I gracefully lost to three very talented women (Sue Isle, Pamela Freeman and Lisa Hannett, hard to argue with that!) in my categories, I was delighted at so many of the wins (including several works/authors I have championed over the last year) that it felt like a very successful night. No one will be surprised at how delighted I was to see The Courier’s New Bicycle honoured. And of course there was the one that hadn’t been mentioned on the shortlist at all…

Galactic Suburbia won the Peter McNamara Convenor’s Award! We are very grateful and happy about that, it was lovely to be able to acknowledge our little podcast’s success on a literal stage in front of our peers. Plus we won actual cash money thanks to the CAL copyright fund, one of the sponsors. We haven’t decided yet what to do with the money once we’ve covered a year or two’s podcast hosting costs (WISCON FUND!) but look forward to wrangling about that decision, possibly even on air.

In the meantime, congratulations to all the other winners, and three cheers for Spec Faction who worked tirelessly to put on another great night for the Australian spec fic community. I am very grateful for their efforts!

The winners:

CHILDREN’S FICTION (told primarily through words): City of Lies by Lian Tanner (Allen & Unwin)

CHILDREN’S FICTION (told primarily through pictures): Sounds Spooky by Christopher Cheng (author) and Sarah Davis (illustrator) (Random House Australia)

YOUNG ADULT short story: Nation of the Night by Sue Isle (Nightsiders, Twelfth Planet Press)

YOUNG ADULT novel: Only Ever Always by Penni Russon (Allen & Unwin)

ILLUSTRATED BOOK / GRAPHIC NOVEL: JOINT WINNERS – Hidden by Mirranda Burton (author & illustrator) (Black Pepper) AND The Deep: Here be Dragons by Tom Taylor (author) and James Brouwer (illustrator) (Gestault Publishing)

COLLECTION: Bluegrass Symphony by Lisa Hannett (Ticonderoga Publications)

ANTHOLOGY: Ghosts by Gaslight edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers (HarperVoyager)

HORROR short story: JOINT WINNERS – The Past is a Bridge Best Left Burnt by Paul Haines (The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Brimstone Press) AND The Short Go: a Future in Eight Seconds by Lisa L. Hannett (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)

HORROR novel: TWO HONORABLE MENTIONS AWARDED TO: The Broken Ones by Stephen M. Irwin (Hachette) AND The Business of Death by Trent Jamieson (Hachette)

FANTASY short story: Fruit of the Pipal Tree by Thoraiya Dyer (After the Rain, FableCroft Publishing)

FANTASY novel: Ember and Ash by Pamela Freeman (Hachette)

SCIENCE FICTION short story: Rains of la Strange by Robert N Stephenson (Anywhere but Earth, Couer de Lion)

SCIENCE FICTION novel: The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood (HarperVoyager)

The Peter McNamara Convenor’s Awards went to Galactic Suburbia.

The Kris Hembury Encouragement Award went to Emily Craven.

The gift was a box with a poem and some marvellous little treasures inside, but that’s not the bit that had me tearing up and hugging her to bits.

It was what was drawn (and written) on the box. My girl, she has such a thoughtful attention to detail.

This one slayed me – I had seen hints of the Normal Girl/Other Girls phenomenon on Tumblr, but it made no sense to me out of context. Enter the Mary Sue to explain it to me – hooray! I love the way that this story documents the way that one person’s attempt to parody the representation of women was misunderstood, then reclaimed, and had a massive fandom build around it, all in about 48 hours. Inspector Spacetime, eat your heart out.

A fascinating, brain-exploding essay on the topic of Women and Ambition which is of particular interest to me because I seem to be surrounded these days by women (including myself) who often feel the need to apologise or feel embarrassed about their successes.

I learned a lot in this essay about Muslim women, and how their lives revolve so much about other women that fiction involving them simply has to pass the Bechdel Test – and if it doesn’t, there’s a problem. I think this is one that all fantasy writers should consider carefully because it’s relevant to the depiction of all female characters in fantasy fiction. It blows the whole stupid ‘it’s historically authentic to make them suffer because women in medieval times couldn’t do anything interesting’ argument out of the water. Even if you have built a fantasy that revolves around ingrained sexist or patriarchal traditions, the women will still be somewhere together, talking to each other.

Over at the Aqueduct Press blog, L. Timmel Duchamp picked up on Kirstyn’s post about learning to feel unsafe as a girl, discussing her own experience and perspective.

N.K. Jemisin talks about why you should never ever apologise for reading an author’s books through the library.

A thoughtful post about the Bechdel Test and how it relates to her own work by Sherwood Smith.

THE FOLLOWING VID SPOILS ALL THE THINGS OF THE AVENGERS MOVIE (well all the cool things involving Black Widow) WHICH IS MOST OF THE THINGS (which is why my daughter is getting Black Widow Lego for Christmas)

News

Drink Tank loves us! Download their Hugo shortlist commentary here.

Mondy loves us too! He makes us go awww.

James Tiptree Jr finally in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and about time too.

Talking to Alistair Reynolds: he defends the idea that science fiction has a limited number of plots

Locus Award Finalists

Clarke Award

Women in (Japanese) Comics: Cheryl Morgan reports; Anime News Network

Some kickstarter stuff:
Feminist Historical Anthology from Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

Scalzi on Amanda Palmer and how she worked hard for 10 years to get her “overnight success”

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa: We Wuz Pushed by Brit Mandelo
Alex: Castles Made of Sand, Gwyneth Jones; Captain America; The Avengers; Confusion of Princes, Garth Nix
Tansy: A Confusion of Princes, Garth Nix; The Avengers; Earth 2 & World’s Finest; Ishtar

Tansy’s Note: “I do not mourn the boob window” is a classic line that should be long remembered and oft repeated – but Cheryl Morgan said it first! I only steal from the best…

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

So how did they stack up?

I did enjoy World’s Finest greatly – the concept of the comic is fantastic, the pacing and dialogue are excellent, and there’s nothing in there yet that makes my inner feminist want to set fire to things. As with many fans of Power Girl and Huntress, I found the reading experience a bit unsettling, because of having to get used to these different versions of the characters, who are now all that we get. But this isn’t the first time I’ve had to do that.

My first Huntress was Helena Wayne, the pre-Crisis daughter of Batman and Catwoman, and I found it very hard to adapt to the cranky mafia princess Helena Bertinelli Huntress, though I came to love her very much. And while my first Power Girl was the cheerful-while-punching-things pre-Crisis version too, the first version of her I grew deeply attached to was the bitchy short-haired canary-costumed soda addict of the early 90′s in Justice League Europe, and giving her up to embrace the gorgeous, funny, actually-makes-sense Conner/Palmiotti/Gray version required a leap of reality all in itself.

I like these characters almost always, however they are written and drawn. I even loved Power Girl when she was being drawn like an elderly bulldog with a blonde wig and hunchbacked cape in the very early JLE, so… I’m not going anywhere.

The new Huntress revamp has been the most controversial of the two, because Helena Bertinelli has a huge fan following, especially among women, and DC has chosen to discard her in favour of bringing back Helena Wayne. While the original Helena Wayne Huntress was all kinds of awesome, and I will defend her mightily, I can see why Helena Bertinelli has won so many hearts.

She’s cranky and uncompromising, she is ruthless and unafraid to be angry. She stands up to Batman and has been known on occasion to call him on his bullshit. She was one of the highlights of Gail Simone’s beloved epic run on Birds of Prey. She has a massive, complex backstory, and she’s been around for more than 20 years, so it’s unsurprising that many Helena fans are responding with a sense of betrayal, similar to what happened when the decision was made last year to get rid of Barbara Gordon’s Oracle identity and put her back to being the young Batgirl.

It really doesn’t help that the opening pages of World’s Finest refer to Helena Bertinelli as a dead woman whose identity Helena Wayne has used and is now discarding. Further anger/resentment came because the gorgeous Huntress miniseries last year implied from the start that we were reading the Helena Bertinelli we knew, only for it to be revealed at the end that it was Helena Wayne all along.

See, Kara no longer has a boob window! What an awesome feminist choice on behalf of the artist...

But let’s look at the Huntress we do get for a minute, because she’s all kinds of awesome. For a start, they are continuing the new costume revealed in the mini-series, and I am a touch sad for the comics world that I am this excited a character is still not showing her midriff, but come on! Let’s have a high five for the fully dressed woman in Kevlar, holding a crossbow!

The new backstory has also changed – back in the day, Helena Wayne discovered her mother’s past when Selina Wayne was blackmailed into being Catwoman again, and killed in the process. Helena, already an adult was inspired to become a superhero partly because of the sadness and strength of her widowed father (who had long since retired as Batman) but mostly because of wanting to avenge her mother. She worked as a lawyer by day, and a superhero by night, working to uphold justice in both areas of her life.

More of this please, Mr Maguire

Power Girl has had less controversy, because her actual backstory and character haven’t changed noticeably at all. I was glad to see that the often-forgotten Karen Starr identity is being used cleverly here, and is a part of Power Girl’s personality. She seems very similar to the Gray/Palmiotti version of the character in personality, and I like very much that we see her ambition, business sense and corporate tendencies are all still there, as well as being used to support the main drive of the World’s Finest story – that is, the quest for them to get home.

I don't miss the boob window, but oh I DO miss the awesome Amanda Conner Peege faces

Unfortunately, the costume they have provided for her is ugly as 80′s sin, and there’s some quite odd looking artwork (by George Perez) going on in the book which I think suggests that there is not enough confidence in her character’s ability to be memorable without flashing her boobs through a hole. It’s a bit sad to me that she looks most like the Kara I know in the scenes where she’s half-naked, and I hope that the current creators will remember that apart from making cheesecake seem funny and awesome, the other thing that Amanda Conner did in her brilliant run as Power Girl’s artist was to PUT A FREAKING JUMPER ON HER.

I have hopes it will improve. When it comes down to it, this is a fun action comic about two women who are friends and share an important quest. I think the concept is great and I did enjoy the writing between Kara and Helena, even if they aren’t quite any of the Karas and Helenas I remember. I’m sticking with it.

And I really didn’t mean to write so much about that comic and almost nothing on the other! Earth 2 is mostly an extended flashback sequence, but the art by Nicola Scott is gorgeous, and more than makes up for that. Her Earth 2 Wonder Woman is one of the most fantastic Amazon designs I’ve seen, and I liked the way she drew Helena and Kara’s Earth 2 identities – I really wish she was drawing their book!

What interests me most about this comic is the last few pages though, when I finally started getting the hang of the concept of it. They seem to be rebooting the Justice Society characters – so far Alan Scott and Jay Garrick, but I hope for more – as contemporary young superheroes, as if they were starting from scratch now. This is quite exciting, and the sort of thing I really wanted to see more of in the New 52. I think part of the reason I’m not as angry as others about the reboot of Power Girl and Huntress is that their title seems to fit more with what we were told the New 52 would be – a grand revisioning of the universe, as opposed to an occasional revisioning of the universe, which fits badly and awkwardly in with all those Batman titles that get to stay exactly the same as they were because everyone loves Batman, right?

More and more I feel that it would have been better for them to throw EVERYTHING away and start from scratch, instead of trying to have their cake and eat it too. Because mostly, the parts that seem to have been sacrificed are the parts that had less mainstream fanbases, which is why so many female readers are punching walls and STILL asking where Stephanie and Cassandra Cain are. Also, so many of the new 52 titles seem to have changed by going backwards instead of forwards – do we really need to see the Barry Allen story again? And what happens to the characters who are part of that big, messy ‘not the original but not the absolute latest version’ puddle of DC history?

So yes, if we are going to have a reboot – and there it is staring at us from September last year – then the bigger the better. As long as we’re not chucking female and minority characters out with the bathwater. I think using Earth 2 as an excuse to play with beloved old characters, and give them a new lease on life Battlestar Galactica style, is quite fun, and apparently we’re getting a Nicola Scott Hawkgirl, which is BASICALLY ALL I NEEDED TO KNOW. This book and any associated titles might be the closest thing we get to a DC equivalent of Marvel’s Ultimate universe, and I’m all for that.

I’m still reading Batgirl, Batwoman and Wonder Woman from the New 52, I enjoyed the Ray and Huntress minis, and I have not OFFICIALLY dropped other titles which I was quite enjoying but haven’t been finding time to read on my iPad, like JLI, Superboy and Teen Titans. But these two comics, World’s Finest and Earth 2, while they are flawed and problematic in places, are still the most exciting titles I’ve come across yet, since the universe changed (again). And I’m really, really glad that one of the most iconic female friendships of the DCU is where it should be, front and centre in a regular title. So I’m keeping them.